Wouldn't a virtual cloud server better (e.g. Hetzner) suited for this, at least at the beginning. (Once you know some visitor stats, you can right-size the box and move away from the cloud.)

It could be practical, internet speed will be a limitation for sure if it’s hosting a website not just apis. It really depends, also consider vps from hentzer auctions for splitting some services or even a refurbished server from 2016 era they are under valued for sure. How I like to think this through on how much everything is worth is measuring my (personal/organization) capabilities, capacity and quality of life for on going ops and in crisis. How big of an impact is it when things go wrong, how could I fix it and is there a chance it’s irreversible. Basically frame it around risk and your risk tolerance, I prefer to focus spending on ways to make my 2am crisis least stressful budgets allow.

At work I’ve moved us to a hybrid solution where we use cloud for managed database and storage solutions and compute on local servers. I personally prefer to have the budget be spent on the ops/maintenance of the scariest thing losing company data and somehow failing to maintain securing that data. Compute is almost easy to me in comparison, disaster strikes I just switch to another server local or in cloud, let it talk to the database, secure out going access, run my docker compose. More time spent on the write up than the fix. Someone that is a seasoned dba may choose the exact opposite.